Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Russia denies war crimes in Syria after hospital bombings

Russia rejects Turkish claims is has committed "an obvious war crime" following the deaths of up to 50 people in bombing attacks on hospitals and schools in Syria.
(Above: anti-Assad Syrian activists have released video which they say shows cluster bombs being dropped by Russian planes near Aleppo)

TUESDAY 16 FEBRUARY 2016

Russia, which is giving military support to the Assad government in Syria, has always denied killing civilians in air strikes and says it is targeting "terrorists" and Islamic State.

Up to 50 people were killed on Monday when missiles hit five medical facilities and two schools in rebel-held areas of Syria, according to the United Nations, which called the attacks a blatant violation of international law.

At least 14 were killed in the northern town of Azaz, a rebel stronghold near the Turkish border, when missiles hit a children's hospital and a school sheltering refugees.

There was also an attack on an MSF hospital in the town of Marat Numan in the province of Idlib, with seven people killed and at least eight staff missing. MSF, a French charity, said the attack was either carried out by the Syrian government or Russia.

'War crime'

UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville condemned the air strikes, saying: "Clearly Syrian and Russian planes are very active in this area. They should know who is responsible. If it was deliberate, intentional targeting of those facilities, it could amount to a war crime."

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "We categorically do not accept such statements, the more so as every time those making these statements are unable to prove their unfounded accusations in any way."

Turkey has said it will not allow Azaz to fall to Kurdish YPG fighters, who are backed by Russia, in what could become a direct confrontation between Moscow and a Nato member.

Ankara is worried about Kurdish involvement in the five-year Syrian civil war because it fears its own Kurdish population could be encouraged to seek separation from Turkey.

Ground operation

An unnamed Turkish official said it was asking its coalition allies, including the US, to take part in ground operations in Syria.

"We want a ground operation. If there is a consensus, Turkey will take part," said the official. "Without a ground operation, it is impossible to stop this war."

The violence follows a ceasefire agreement reached in Munich on Friday that is supposed to come into effect at the end of this week.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said yesterday that a ceasefire did not mean an end to hostilties, which were likely to continue for longer than a week.

Turks head to Syria to defend Turkmen 'brothers'

Nationalist and pro-rebel groups say they are inundated with calls from Turks keen to fight with Turkmen against Russian and Syrian forces

Rebel fighters from the Al-Ezz bin Abdul Salam Brigade fighting in the Turkman Mountains, in Syria's northern Latakia province (AFP)

Umar Farooq-Tuesday 16 February 2016

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Tens of thousands of Turks have expressed a desire to cross the border into Syria and join Turkmen rebels fighting government and Russian forces in Syria, with hundreds already believed to have joined the battle.

According to aid groups, who have been funnelling aid to rebel areas, scores of potential recruits now want to go to the Turkmen Mountain, a border area in Syria's Latakia province, to help native Turkmen under growing threat from Russian air strikes and government advances.

Between 250 and 500 Turkish citizens have already gone to Latakia to join mostly Turkmen rebels, with casualties on the rise.

While thousands of Turkish citizens are estimated to be already fighting in Syria with groups such as the Islamic State or the Nusra Front, those heading towards Turkmen areas are drawn by a mix of nationalist, ethnic, and religious sympathy for the minority, says a group sending aid to the region and experts on fighters in Syria.

Right-wing groups like Alperen Ocaklari and Ulku Ocaklari (often called the Grey Wolves), and opposition parties including the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) say the Russian bombing of Turkmen areas has ignited nationalist fervour in Turkey.

Kursat Mican says he has been busy fielding phone calls from potential recruits since 24 November, when Turkey shot down a Russian jet over Turkmen Mountain. He is the Istanbul chairman of Alperen Ocaklari, a cultural and political organisation founded by right-wing religious nationalists that has been delivering aid to the Turkmen for nearly two years.

“They are calling me to ask how they can go join the Turkmen [rebels],” Mican told MEE in the group's Uskudar office, seated beside a mural of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet Fatih entering Constantinople in 1453.

“We had 12,000 people call us to go [join the rebels], then we stopped counting.

Ukraine’s president calls for prime minister to resign

Police officers stand guard before an annual report of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk at parliament in Kiev on Feb. 16. (Roman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency)

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, center, reacts after surviving a vote of no confidence Tuesday. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

By Andrew Roth-February 16

KIEV, Ukraine — Heralding a political showdown between the country’s two leading politicians, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday called for Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to resign and for a cabinet shake-up to address outrage over allegations of corruption and political cronyism.

Amid a wave of resignations from reform-minded political appointees, Poroshenko said in a statement Tuesday that Yatsenyuk’s cabinet has lost the public trust. Poroshenko also said he has asked for the resignation of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who has repeatedly been accused in Ukraine's press of corruption.

“Obviously society and the government are not satisfied with the pace of change,” Poroshenko said in a blistering statement. “Therapy is already not enough to restore confidence. Surgery is needed.”

[As focus remains on Syria, Ukraine sees heaviest fighting in months]

Poroshenko’s announcement marked the peak of a political crisis that has been building in Ukraine since the country’s pro-Western revolution in 2014. While attention was long diverted to questions of separatism and Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, the stalemate in that conflict has returned attention to the glacial pace of reforms in the capital.

The collapse of the government would mark the most serious political crisis for Ukraine since massive street protests ousted Russian-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. As political infighting reaches fever pitch, there is only one popular consensus: The goals of the revolution have not been met.

If Yatsenyuk is ousted, his supporters may leave the ruling coalition, leading to fresh talks to maintain the government or snap parliamentary elections. Those elections could prove too much of a shock for the country, Poroshenko said Tuesday. He called for Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party to remain part of the ruling coalition and return trust to the government “within the parliament walls.”

Both Yatsenyuk’s and Poroshenko’s favorability ratings have plunged to single digits in recent months, mainly because of Ukraine’s flagging economy. But it was largely pressure from within Poroshenko’s own party that forced his hand Tuesday, as lawmakers gathered signatures to push a vote of no confidence against Yatsenyuk.

Yatsenyuk, who took the lectern in the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, on Tuesday to defend the government’s record, did not immediately respond to Poroshenko’s letter.

Several key reformers in the government have resigned this month with scandalous denunciations about the state of reform in Ukraine. On Monday, Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko left office, writing that “the current leadership of the prosecutor’s office has once and for all turned it into a body where corruption dominates, and corrupt schemes are covered up.”

“It’s not justice and law that are in charge here, but arbitrary rule and lawlessness,” he wrote.

[In blow to Ukraine’s reform hopes, top official resigns, citing corruption]

Ukraine’s government also has been under increasing pressure from its backers in the United States and Europe, who view ongoing corruption problems with growing dismay.

The problems in the Ukrainian government are so severe that some Western diplomats have begun to worry that they will weaken the West’s sanctions regime against Russia. European Union measures will expire at the end of July, unless the 28 E.U. nations vote unanimously to extend them.

“The Ukrainians have not helped themselves,” said one Western diplomat involved in the sanctions regime, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions candidly. The E.U. sanctions against Russia are linked in part to whether the Kremlin helps Kiev regain control of rebel-held parts of the Russia-Ukraine border. But whether Russia lives up to its end of the bargain or not, fractious European nations may be losing their appetite to make financial sacrifices on Ukraine’s behalf, the diplomat said.

European nations, besieged by a flood of refugees from the conflict in Syria, may be looking for more cooperation from the Kremlin, the diplomat said, with Russia’s airstrikes now playing a major role in the grinding battle there. E.U. leaders also may be less willing to line up behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who until now has been the main enforcer of sanctions discipline but is under attack for throwing open Germany’s doors to refugees.

Michael Birnbaum in Moscow contributed to this report.

Pope John Paul II letters reveal 32-year relationship with woman

Correspondence sheds light on relationship with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a Polish philosopher, beginning in 1973

Pope John Paul II and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Photograph: provided by Bill and Jadwiga Smith

Pope John Paul II and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Photograph: provided by Bill and Jadwiga Smith

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome-Monday 15 February 2016

Pope John Paul II had an intimate 32-year relationship with a Polish philosopher who is believed to have once declared her love to him while he was still a cardinal, according to letters discovered by the BBC.

There is no indication that the former pope, who died in 2005 and was made a saint by Pope Francis, had a sexual relationship with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka or ever broke his vow of celibacy, but the correspondence sheds light on the depth of the relationship Pope John Paul II had with Tymieniecka when he was archbishop of Kraków, including the possibility that he struggled to come to terms with his feelings for her.

According to letters unearthed by the BBC, which is airing a programme about the relationship on Monday night on BBC1, their friendship began in 1973, when Tymieniecka contacted Karol Wojtyła, the future John Paul II, about a book she had written on philosophy. The two had much in common: they had both been born in Poland and survived the Nazi occupation during the second world war. Tymieniecka moved to the US after the war, where she married and had three children and had an academic career as a philosopher.

According to the BBC, the pair met on several occasions after becoming friends in order to work on an updated version of the then cardinal’s book, The Acting Person. At one point in 1974, he told her that he was re-reading four of her letters because they were “so meaningful and deeply personal”.

When Cardinal Wojtyła was asked to lead a Polish delegation of bishops to a Catholic meeting in the US, Tymieniecka invited him to stay at her family’s house just outside of Pomfret, Vermont. “It was just the sort of outdoor life he enjoyed and photographs that I think were taken at the time show him at his most relaxed,” wrote Ed Stourton, of the BBC.

The BBC contends that Tymieniecka may have confronted the future pope about her feelings for him in Vermont, because he later wrote a letter to her confessing that he was struggling with their relationship. After telling her he believed she was a gift from God, he wrote: “If I did not have this conviction, some moral certainty of Grace, and of acting in obedience to it, I would not dare act like this.”

In one letter after that period, he wrote: “My dear Teresa, I have received all three letters. You write about being torn apart, but I could find no answer to these words.”

Beijing to Chinese Humans: Please Move So We Can Hunt for Aliens

BY SIOBHÁN O'GRADY-FEBRUARY 16, 2016
Over the past two decades, millions of Chinese citizens have been forcibly removed from their homes to allow for the construction of Olympic stadiums, a hydroelectric power plant, and various other government-approved land grabs.

Now about another 9,100 will be moved — this time so Beijing can hunt for aliens in outerspace.
On Tuesday, state-run Xinhua news agency reported that residents of Pingtang and Luodian counties in the relatively poor southwestern province of Guizhou will be evacuated during the wrap-up of installing FAST (or five-hundred-meter aperture spherical radio telescope), the world’s largest radio telescope.

The telescope’s mission? To make contact with extraterrestrials and discover the origins of the universe — a goal Chinese astronomer Shi Zhicheng believes is attainable.

“If intelligent aliens exist, the messages that they produced or left behind, if they are being transmitted through space, can be detected and received by FAST,” Shi told the Hong Kong- based South China Morning Post last year.

The telescope’s diameter is more than 547 yards, and according to Communist Party officials, will require more than a three-mile radius to detect signals from outer space.

It’s cost the Chinese government more than $180 million since construction began in 2011. And now that it’s nearing completion, Beijing’s eco-migration bureau will also be shelling out at least $1,800 to each resident being forced from home. Four different settlements will be set up for those who have to move.

According to Communist Party officials, the telescope’s location in Guizhou’s mountainous Qiannan region makes it the perfect fit for exploring contact with aliens. The only downside? Those pesky humans who have made their homes there.

Photo Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Two-year-old Nigerian boy accused of being a witch rescued by aid workers

'Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we've both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children'

Anja Ringgren Loven gives water to Hope, 2, after finding the emaciated boy wandering the streets Anja Ringgren Lovén/Facebook

Samuel Osborne-Monday 15 February 2016

Harrowing pictures show how a starving two-year-old Nigerian boy was rescued after being discovered naked and wandering the streets because his family thought he was a witch.

The boy, who has been named Hope, was found emaciated and riddled with worms after being forced to live off scraps of food thrown to him by passersby for eight months.

He was rescued by Anja Ringgren Loven, a Danish woman living in Africa who bent down and began feeding the boy and giving him water.

She then wrapped the boy in a blanket and took him to the nearest hospital.

Ms Loven is the founder of African Children's Aid Education and Development Foundation, which she created to help children which have been labelled as witches and therefore neglected and even killed by members of their community.

She runs a children's centre where the children she saves receive medical care, food and schooling.

India's target to import GMO-free corn: mission impossible?

A woman selling grilled corn takes shelter under an umbrella as it rains on a beach in Mumbai in this July 11, 2012 file photo.REUTERS/DANISH SIDDIQUI/FILES

BY MAYANK BHARDWAJ AND NAVEEN THUKRAL-Tue Feb 16, 2016

As India prepares to import corn for the first time in 16 years, at least one stipulation in its international tender has become much tougher to meet - that shipments of the crop are completely free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The Asian country of 1.2 billion people does not allow cultivation of any genetically modified food, and has rules that are supposed to ensure that imports contain no trace of GMOs.But an explosion in the use of GM crops worldwide means that purity grade has become harder to attain and, with a growing risk of the supply chain being contaminated, underlines the vulnerabilities faced by countries trying to stay GM free.

Even a shipment containing a handful of genetically altered seeds could cross pollinate with local varieties and mean that in India's case farmers end up illegally growing GM crops.

"They can buy non-GMO corn, especially out of the Black sea region, but I doubt anybody can offer shipments with zero presence of GMOs," James Dunsterville, an agricultural commodities analyst at Geneva-based commodities information platform AgFlow.

South Korea's Daewoo International won the tender to ship 250,000 tonnes of non-GM corn to India from Ukraine, but two international traders in Singapore and an exporter in Kiev said Ukraine could at best guarantee 99.1 percent non-GM corn.

"The biggest risk of accepting anything less than 99, or 100, percent is that the imported GM corn may eventually get mixed with conventional seeds that farmers sow in India," said an Indian government scientist.

"If, God forbid, any GM seed gets mixed here, it'll spoil the entire Indian agriculture," added the scientist, who asked not to be named since he was not authorised to talk to media.

Daewoo declined to comment but two sources close to the company said it would be able to meet the requirements and that it was aware of the conditions in last month's tender issued by Indian state-run firm PEC.

RISKS OF CONTAMINATION

Shrinking arable land, volatile weather and a world population tipped to top 9 billion by 2050 are increasing pressures to plant GM crops to boost yields and protect from pests.

Much of the corn in major producers such as the United States, Brazil and Argentina is GM, helping production hit record levels in recent years and keeping a lid on food prices.

Global corn prices have recovered about 13 percent after hitting a 5-year low in 2014 but are still more than 50 percent below a record price of $8.49 a bushel in 2012.

Indicating the difficulty of keeping GM free, Greenpeace said that Chinese farmers were illegally growing GM corn, despite an official ban on cultivating GM varieties or other staple food crops.

The environmental group said almost all samples taken from cornfields in some parts of the north-east, China's breadbasket, tested positive for GMO. China has not directly commented on the report, though officials have issued warnings to seed dealers and farmers not to use unapproved GM seeds.

Some farm economists have said India should speed up efforts to embrace GM foods after China took a step towards this with its bid for Swiss transgenic seed developer Syngenta.

But public and political opposition in India remains strong amid fears they could compromise food safety and biodiversity. GM advocates say such fears are not scientifically proven.

"India must reject cargoes from suppliers who promise to provide corn that is only 99.1 percent free of GM organisms,” said Devinder Sharma, an independent food and trade policy analyst based in Chandigarh, highlighting a risk of contamination.

However, Sharma said that it had become standard global practice for GM-free buyers to settle for crops that were up to 99 percent GM free.

A source at trader PEC said India's condition that the imports were non-GM was sacrosanct.

PEC received 15 bids from global traders including Daewoo, Noble, Cargill and Agro Corp to supply corn mainly to be used as animal feed for India's poultry industry.

But Singapore-based traders said there could have been more participants in the tender but for the non-GM restriction.

Though Ukraine and growers in Europe, such as France, do produce non-GMO corn, suppliers may not be able to guarantee supplies are completely free of gene-altered grains because of common bulk handling systems, said a trading manager with an international trading company.

"It could be a dirty truck or a dirty conveyor belt. It only takes one seed to get a GMO positive result."

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in KIEV; Editing by Ed Davies)

Monday, February 15, 2016

Where is journalist Subramanium Ramachandran 9 years after he disappeared? – Watchdog

(A vigil in Colombo calling for justice for journalists disappeared and killed)

15/02/2016

Subramanium Ramachandran, a Jaffna based Tamil journalist disappeared on 15th of February 2007 in Jaffna. Despite eyewitness accounts of being detained at an Army checkpoint and camps, till today his whereabouts are unknown and his elderly parents and family await his arrival every day. His colleagues and family remember him as a courageous journalist who would write without fear on any issue. During the war, he was one of the few journalists based in Jaffna who would continue to report on abuse and violations by the Military and other para militant groups. Nine years after his disappearance Ramachandran’s case like other journalists, activists, civilians who disappeared or were killed remains uninvestigated and under reported.

Subramaniam Ramachandran

The Incident

Few weeks before his disappearance, Ramachandran had written an article on illegal sand mining and transportation which was taking place with the involvement of businessmen and military officers. Following this article, a Judge was reported to have made an order to confiscate a vehicle used for this purpose. At the same time the LTTE was reported to have torched another vehicle belonging to the businessmen. His colleagues believe that his abductors were persons angered by this article.

According to an eye witness, on the day of the incident, Ramachandran was coming home after work. It was a routine at that time to have a curfew imposed in Jaffna after 6.00pm. On his way he was stopped at the Army camp at Kalikai junction, not far from his home in Jaffna. The eyewitness had seen some soldiers having surrounded him for questioning. At around 7.00pm when the power was out, neighbors have reported on hearing an Army vehicle (Buffel) coming to the area and that they believe that Ramachandran may have been taken away at this point.

Murdered Tamil journalist remembered in Jaffna

15 February 2016

Tamil journalist Puniyamoorthy Sathiyamoorthy, who was killed by a Sri Lankan artillery barrage inside the ‘No Fire Zone’ in February 2009, was remembered in Jaffna this week.

A ceremony held at Jaffna Hindu College saw the Editor-in-Chief of the Jaffna daily ‘Valampuri’ N. Vijayasuntharam speak alongside the director of Jaffna Hospital Dr Sathiyamoorthy.

Puniyamoorthy Sathiyamoorthy, a journalist of Vanni based Media House wrote the military column for the 'Eezhanaatham' daily. He was reporting from inside the ‘No Fire Zone’ when Sri Lankan artillery shells landed in the area.

“Several Tamil media reports said Sathiyamoorthy did not die immediately,” said theCommittee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “They cited relatives who said a lack of proper medical attention contributed to his death.”

The CPJ also said “Colleagues outside of the conflict area, not all of them Tamils, said Sathiyamoorthy’s reports and commentaries were measured, and that he strove to maintain journalistic standards and an accurate representation of the wartime situations in which he found himself”.

“His work had global impact, reaching large numbers of Tamils living overseas,” it added.

Also see an obituary by TamilNet here.

Govt. and not UN is entrusted with task of national reconciliation

By Jehan Perera-February 15, 2016

The visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein went more smoothly than expected for the government. The weeks before the visit of the High Commissioner had seen President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe making apparently contradictory statements on the issue of international participation in the post-war reconciliation mechanisms, especially in relation to the judiciary and accountability. This led to concern about the possibility of the government backtracking on the commitments it had made as a co-signatory to the UNHRC resolution in Geneva in October 2015. There was also concern that the visiting UN dignitary would be critical of the government’s approach to the post-war reconciliation process while in the country.

High Commissioner Zeid’s critical comments during his stay in Sri Lanka on the politicization and failures of the Sri Lankan judiciary prompted angry rebuttals in Sri Lanka and also led to the inference that he was making the case for international participation in the accountability process. A fixed and narrow position on this issue by the international community will place the government in a difficult position. The core of the political opposition to the transitional justice process within the country is the concern that the international community is eroding the country’s sovereignty with its insistence on the participation of foreign and Commonwealth judges, prosecutors and investigators as specified in the UNHRC resolution. It is this issue that the political opposition is likely to capitalize in order to weaken the government.

The sense of nationalism within the Sri Lankan polity cannot be underestimated. The identity of the Sinhala people has been shaped by the historical memory of the struggles of the past two millennia in which the predominance of the Buddhist religion and the political independence of the island’s kingdoms were eroded and lost due to the depredations of different waves of foreign invaders, from India in the early millennia to the Western colonial powers in the last 500 years. On the other hand, this nationalism is not limited to the Sinhala people. It also finds its expression in the memory of the Tamil people that three independent kingdoms existed at the turn of the 16th century when the first of the Western colonial powers visited the island’s shores. There is a need to find an appropriate balance between these two strong ethnic-based nationalisms. Read more...

New Constitution: Need to Address Post-War Challenges Effectively

Featured image courtesy constitutionnet.org (photo credit: Hemmathagama)

by Lukman Harees

- on 02/15/2016

Constitutional design processes are loaded with expectations

about endurance, efficacy, the resolution of conflicts, and political reconstruction.

In the real world, however, most constitutions fail” (Ginsburg et al. 2009: 22;).

Ever since the political changes which ensued in 2015, there appears to be another social contract between the government and the people of Sri Lanka forming. Clear signs are on the horizon that people are now waking up to the reality that the country needs a qualitative change of the political culture and a national reconciliation platform, in order to go forward, and that such changed realities are calling for their active participation, inclusion, and transparency to overcome many socio-political challenges including ethnic discord, widespread corruption and abuse. Thus, it is not possible for the drafters to ignore these realities, when the country is in the process of drafting another constitution, to ensure that it incorporates and reflects the needs and aspirations of the citizens it is intended to govern. How the government responds to these calls for public participation and inclusion may determine whether the constitution-making process unites or further divides this society, whether they help or hinder the creation of a national consensus on fundamental principles and values, and whether the processes and documents that result from them will be deemed legitimate.

There is no single blueprint for how to make a viable constitution, but our Post –Independence decades of constitution-making experience and from elsewhere, underscore that mere top-down approaches are rarely effective, without a supportive inclusive and participatory constitution making approach. There should therefore be a healthy blend of an expert-based drafting process, with adequate public consultation, which would more effectively address root causes of conflict and sectarian divisions, and ensure that the political process benefits from the full contribution of all citizens, including women and youth. To achieve optimal results, constitution makers must have the political will to carry out a genuine process of civic education and consultations, in which the views of citizens are not only carefully considered, but they are also educated in the process, on the national priorities and inherent dangers of following partisan policies. The constitution makers must carefully apply guiding principles, such as transparency and inclusion, and ensure that sufficient time and resources are allocated to the process. Otherwise, political opportunism will take root and people will once again be taken up a blind path to oblivion. We cannot afford to have repeat 1972s/1978s which has polarised our communities and divided our nation.

Continue Reading →

Two Chief Ministers In One Province – Wayamba?

By Lal Keerthie Fernando –February 15, 2016 |

Lal Keerthie Fernando

There is open mischief when it comes to electoral seat placements in Wayamba. In particular, the Puttalam District. For years, Puttalam district has remained dwarfed on its electoral rights to Kurunegala district. No matter what…, at the end of any election, Kurunegala district ran away with the challenge cup – the Chief Ministers’ Post!!

The two districts, Puttalam and Kurunegala, area wise; Puttalam has an area of 3072 sq.km, of which Wilpattu National Park, 1320 sq.km (327,000) acres and Kurunegala 4816 sq.km. Puttalam district with a population of 778,153 and Kurunegala district with 1,611,000.

Puttalam district have remained with 5 electoral seats through out and at the last 2015 elections, Presidential and Parliamentary , there were: Puttalam (125,702); Anamaduwa(112,978); Chilaw(118,171); Nattandiya(89,975); Wennappuwa(106,183) – electors. This gave a total of 553,009 electors in the Puttalam district. By demarcation of above district; the district will come to remain with 5 additional seats, thereby, 10 electoral seats. Mind you…, there were almost 10-12,000 moslem refugees in Puttalam; refugees in their own country, who never had the franchise. Above break down would give an average 55,300 electors after demarcation per electorate.

Kurunegala distict have remained with 14 electoral seats through out, with a total electors of the 14 seats as 1,266,443. Presidential and Parliamentary elections(2015), didn’t show much difference, with 6.64% in favour of ex-President, Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR), and 4.16% in favour of UNP at Parliamentary elections in Wayamba (both districts). At the Presidential elections, Maithripala Sirisena (MS), received 50.04% , higher than (MR) in the Puttalam district and at General elections (GE), UNP received 50.40% higher than UPFA in same district.

Elections in 2001 & 2004, figures show that Puttalam district remained with a definite political “say”, but remained un-accounted for in political decisions, continuously over the years. Obviously, these practices bound to impose some form of immaturity for better governance as partners, while Kurunegala district calling the shots as a dominant partner !! As it is now, Puttalam district only participates in representative democracy, on behalf of the system !!

Both districts have worked well together, depending on what type of Chief Minister (CM) in Kurunegala is in charge. Former (CM), Gamini Jayawickrema Perera (GJP), present Minister of Food and services, had a colleague in the Puttalam district, Festus, and with the UNP in power, matters were much easier. Festus, was an asset for the Puttalam district. Creating a leadership via an equal franchise is envisaged for and on behalf of the Puttalam district. Read More